What Lance Armstrong Owes Austin

AUSTIN -- His case for redemption has been made to his associates, leaked to the press and taped for broadcast to the world. Still, one apology remains.

He was our Cowboys, our Lakers, our Yankees. In the grand symbiotic branding bargain struck between ambitious cities and their athletic emissaries, he was the face of our franchise, as much as any quarterback, point guard or pitcher in the country. His sport, cycling, ostensibly involved a team, but no one knew or asked or even cared what role those background riders served. Waterboys, perhaps? He played only away games, and it worked in his favor. He never needed, never asked for and never received the kind of tax-increment-financed mixed-use New Urbanist boondoggle so many team owners use to place eager municipalities forever in servitude. No: He worked while we slept, half a world away, huffing and puffing through the Alps and over the Pyrenees to something called the Champs-Elysees, which meant winning.

While the adopted name he used on the global stage conjured the knights of the round table and the first man on the moon alike, here in Austin he played to local sensibilities. This is a town where, as best as anyone can remember, Willie Nelson united the rednecks and the hippies in a single concert at the Armadillo World Headquarters, securing for future generations the irrevocable right to wear flip-flops to a $300 sushi dinner at Uchiko. Opening his bike shop under a nickname derived from the French term for all those yellow jerseys he won, Mellow Johnny fit right in.

But make no mistake: On the cusp of the city's biggest period of growth, he found his true constituency among those who envisioned skyscraper condominiums to announce the arrival of a Silicon Third Coast. He played his indomitable winning streak against the deepest anxieties of the Establishment Weird. After all the city's transparent yearning for commercial validation as the live music capital of the world, with little to show for it but Fastball and Spoon, here was a man who could bed, pledge to wed and then unceremoniously dump a bona fide rock star. He called our bluff.

When the city came around to his way of thinking, he set out to remake it in his image. We named a prominent bike trail in his honor. He had other ideas. He championed the ethos of winners winning with a winning mentality. His visage grinned down from billboards, smiling or straining, always winning. At the gym where I play pickup basketball, his hagiographic murals covered every wall. One mural's headline read, "In the beginning," which, if I'm not mistaken, is also the opening phrase of The Bible. Between winning his sixth and seventh jerseys, he opened a nightclub in the warehouse district, Six Lounge (named for…yeah), replete with a 1,900 square foot barroom, a rooftop deck, and bottle service. In a telling choice of words, his promotional materials promised an atmosphere (italics added) "unrivaled by any other lounge."

Here, more than anywhere, you were for him or you were against him. He marked his supporters with yellow wristbands. By the time he came to collect in 2007, promoting a $3 billion bond measure for cancer research to secure his legacy against the inevitable doping charges, he was a force of nature. One opponent of his proposal told the local paper: "It's a long shot for us to beat it. I don't want to fight Lance Armstrong."

Armchair psychoanalysis is good as far as it goes, but perhaps he needed something from the city too. Here was a boy permanently estranged from his father, raised in the sprawling wasteland of suburban North Dallas (Vanilla Ice and I come from there too; neither of us likes to talk about it much) and stricken with a dread disease that threatened to put his talent to waste. A stark glimpse at mortality descended when he was young and strong enough to score a win over even death. He found a place to belong, and to make proud.

And now, as he navigates the great American celebrity perp walk, his big national sponsors have stepped away. The billboards for his watery gym-rat beer have all come down. His cancer charity, Livestrong, has eased him out the door, allowing him to portray the move as a sacrifice "to spare the foundation any negative effects as a result of controversy surrounding my cycling career." Even my spot for hoops, part of the 24-Hour Fitness chain, cleared away the memorabilia in a weekend sweep. According to a desk clerk, Livestrong picked up the valuables; the rest went in the garbage.

But he may always have Austin, apology or no. The police chief still sends the occasional friendly tweet. "I'll ride bikes with Lance Armstrong any day" has been the mayor's last word on the matter. The city fathers have quietly ignored suggestions to rename the bikeway. "We just have to understand the accomplishment was real, but there is an asterisk," wrote a man from the suburbs in a letter to the local paper, expressing a view I've heard all over town.

His last significant public appearance here came in October, when he rallied thousands of cyclists on a hundred-mile ride to raise more than $1.5 million for cancer research. "I've been better," he told the crowd, "but I've also been worse." The next day, his sport's international sanctioning body scrubbed his name from the record books. Leaving his followers with a tweeted photo of himself under his framed tour jerseys, he decamped for Hawaii. Upon his return, he visited the offices of Livestrong. Then he recorded an interview with Oprah Winfrey, for broadcast to the wider world.

Of course, he is never gone long. A week or so ago, at a dinner party where news of the coming television interview cascaded across mobile devices, I watched the center of attention shift from the damned goodness of the hostess' Texas caviar (that's black-eyed peas with…oh, never mind) right back to Lance Edward Armstrong.

Great cities need sports heroes; every great athlete needs a hometown. And some men just need a place willing to go along for the ride.

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